Some of Mississippi’s top Republicans, namely Gov. Tate Reeves and U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, traveled last week to Marshall County in north Mississippi, a stone’s throw from the state line with Tennessee, to celebrate the groundbreaking for a new electric vehicle battery plant.
“Today we broke ground on a project of record proportions — the single largest payroll commitment in Mississippi’s entire history, and the third largest economic development project in Mississippi’s entire history,” Reeves said of the $1.9 billion plant that is slated to create 2,000 jobs paying an average salary of $66,000 annually to build electric batteries to power commercial trucks.
The night before Reeves, Hyde-Smith and the other prominent officials celebrated the new development, their party’s leader, former President Donald Trump, sharply criticized the increase in jobs like the ones the new Marshall County plant will create.
During last week’s often discussed presidential debate, Trump blistered Democratic President Joe Biden’s “green new scam” jobs and called them “a plan to make China rich.”
A nonpartisan organization called E2 is a group of business people and other professionals who “advocate for smart policies that are good for the economy and good for the environment.”
E2 would say it is good for the overall national economy and the environment. Reeves and Hyde-Smith definitely would say the Marshall County electric battery plant is good for Mississippi.
According to the E2 website, the Marshall County plant is one of 316 new projects making a total investment of $124 billion in 41 states creating nearly 107,000 new jobs – all since the passage of Inflation Reduction Act. The Inflation Reduction Act, slammed by Reeves, Hyde-Smith and Trump, was signed into law by Biden and provides incentives for clean energy projects such as electric vehicle battery plants and solar plants.
According to the U.S. Treasury, the Inflation Reduction Act provides a 30% credit for investments in renewable energy projects, such as wind, solar and energy storage products like electric batteries. To receive the tax credit, manufacturers must meet certain wage requirements for employees.
Hyde-Smith, like every Republican in Congress, voted against the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022.
She said at the time that the Inflation Reduction Act “expends $370 billion to jam through Democrats’ radical Green New Deal climate agenda, including tax breaks to wealthy Americans to buy electric vehicles and kitchen appliances.”
Yet, at the Marshall County ground-breaking, Hyde-Smith was front and center, smiling with shovel in hand, breaking ground on the project that was a direct result of the law that she so publicly and boldly opposed.
Trump has vowed to eliminate Biden’s incentives like the Marshall County electric vehicle battery plant. He said he would end “all new spending grants and giveaways under the Joe Biden mammoth socialist bills like the so-called Inflation Reduction Act.”
The Marshall County plant is a joint venture of some international corporate heavyweights: Paccar Inc., Cummins Truck Holdings, Germany-based Daimler Truck Holdings, and China-based Eve Energy. The state is providing an estimated $350 million in incentives to these companies for such items as developing the infrastructure at the site.
Nearly every prominent Mississippi Republican elected official embraced the Marshall County project. They are apparently in good company. Various studies found that a majority of the new plants being built because of Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act are in red congressional districts. CNN, Bloomberg and other media outlets have quoted Republican congressmen saying they now want to keep the clear energy incentive package, though they voted against it.
But now the Republican Party’s standard bearer, Donald Trump, is opposed to it and has vowed to end it. If he is elected to another term and follows through with his threat to do away with the incentives, how might Reeves, Hyde-Smith and other Mississippi Republicans feel about the possible vanishing of those Marshall County jobs?
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